Militant liberals
Sir: Since Mr Dan Morton (September 4) has seen fit to favour me with a somewhat offensive and personal sneer (characteristic, I fear, of the deteriorating level of white argument and discussion in southern Africa), might I briefly defend myself?
I referred to Professor John Vaizey's article as ' perceptive ' because, in the context of the average comment on South Africa in British media (comment frequently white-supremacist, and too often based on distortions or blatant untruths) that in general is what the article was.
I realize that from the viewpoint of the apparently invective-ridden ivory towers of Rhodes University the view may be different, but my view happens to have encompassed more than ten years of living in South Africa, residence in the major cities of three of the four provinces, and marriage into a part-Afrikaans family. I also had a very bad habit of talking to black men, so my view of that country and its people was not restricted to the cosseted and blinkered 18 per cent of self-elected white herrenvolk.
I am quite happy to agree with Mr Morton that Professor Vaizey's comments about one aspect of Rhodes University (about 2 per cent of Professor Vaizey's article) may not have been correct. But for Mr Morton to write one and twothirds columns in The Spectator in reply to a dozen or so Vaizey words suggests that Mr Morton is trying to create a whole animal not from its tooth, but merely from one imprint of its spoor.
In a country where some 30,000 black babies die needlessly (compared with the infant mortality rate in Ghana, for instance) every year from malnutrition and disease caused by apartheid, might I therefore respectfully suggest to Mr Morton that there might be more important demands on his time than the writing of longwinded, sarcastic letters to British journals about the long-past debates of young, pampered whites? The embracing of militant liberalism, for instance?
L. Clarke 26 Kensington Gate, London W8
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